


Thank God for Buddy Holly

by thefavourite



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: DISASTER gay todd, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, distinguished bi charlie, distinguished gay neil, estabilished charlie/knox and meeks/pitts!, functional gays pitts and meeks, functional pan knox, knox and charlie play matchmackers, sexuality revelations, spring break fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:07:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefavourite/pseuds/thefavourite
Summary: “Everyday, it’s-a gettin’ closer; goin’ faster than a rollercoaster.”The Society boys are spending Spring Break in their dorms, and Todd - being the absolute dumbass he is - decides to pin a deeper, decidedly hidden meaning to one of Neil’s most prized vinyls while his best friend is doing chemistry homework.
Relationships: Anderperry - Relationship, Charlie Dalton/Knox Overstreet, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Neil Perry/Todd Anderson, Steven Meeks/Gerard Pitts, Todd Anderson/Neil Perry
Comments: 3
Kudos: 48





	Thank God for Buddy Holly

“Doobie doobie doo,” Neil Perry hummed along to the instrumental portions of “Everyday” by Buddy Holly as his pen twitched against the chemistry paper he had set his eyes on roughly an hour ago - and yet...it was still only five o’clock in that frosted evening. “Everyday, it’s-a gettin’ faster. Everyone said ‘go ahead and ask her’.”

Allowing the atmosphere a few seconds of time for the music to continue to play on, from the other side of the room, Neil’s best friend Todd Anderson fidgeted his feet from side to side as he laid them against the bedrest. He sighed deeply as the crumbled-up papers laying across his chest flew into the air when his chest rose. As the song wrapped itself up, he released a loud enough explosive groan that was practically his way of begging his roommate to sympathetically respond. 

“You got some kinda issue I should be worrying about, Todd?” Neil mumbled, some sense of genuine concern rolling off his tongue with every word. “I’m sorry if I seemed annoyed but...I’m willing to push my focus aside if you need something. And I REALLY should be focused right now. ”

Staring holes into the back of the Perry boy’s head, Todd felt himself nearly hanging off of the words, feeling as though he was perfectly cared for under the watchful eye of his best friend. Quickly enough, he subconsciously shook the words out of his mind. Neil cared a perfectly equal amount about each and every single one of his friends - the members of the society, to be more specific - and Todd was no different. However, after a few seconds of lull and time to think to himself, the boy discovered that the very root of his problems was the constantly-looping, almost-droning device that sat nearby him. As though a glottal stop were endlessly ticking away in his mind, Todd’s eyes instantly flicked up towards the darkly-tinted record player sitting on the night table dividing the two beds.

“Neil - it’s that song,” he insisted, forcing the teenager who was locked into a state of total focus to divert his attention once again. “C-cuh-can you play it again?” 

“Oh, that’s ‘Everyday’!” Neil exclaimed, a beam spreading across his face as though he was experiencing an uptick in pride. “It’s by Buddy Holly. Wonderful tune. Here,”

Sleekly, in a singularly fluid motion, he stood up from his spot and swiped the vinyl into a very particular spot that Todd could not even bother recognizing as something that most record players do.

“Is thuh-this a love song?” he stammered.  
“Oh, for sure,” Neil offered his insight as he pushed himself back into the chair. “What’s intriguing to you about it?”  
“Well,” Todd began his point, feeding off of his roommate’s curiosity. “I t-th-think it m-muh-may be inspiring my writing.”  
“That’s sweet!” Neil kindly observed.

There was a brief beat, during which Todd could feel the deep sensation of a chill crawling up his spine, creeping across his skin as though he was being emotionally taunted by the fiendish guardians of both moments in time and emotion. And, being the amazing friend he was, Neil did not miss a single beat in picking up on Todd’s many altering mannerisms. In fact, he began to work over them.

“If it’s love inspiration...” Neil sort of trailed off before leaping into his own mind again. “Is the poem about a girl?”

Almost like an entire switchboard that teetered on the precipice of his decisions, Todd’s tone flickered to defensive. He darted upward quickly, locking eyes with Neil as he felt the colors flush themselves from his already-pale cheeks.

“I-I-I d-don’t even know yet!” He suddenly cried, pulling his gaze away from Neil’s.  
“Jesus, Todd,” the boy mumbled, a short-circuited layer of annoyance underlined his tone. “Listen, Anderson — I don’t care if the poem is about me, or Charlie, or Knox — for fuck’s sake, I wouldn’t even care if it was about CAMERON. But please, remember you can trust me. I’m the type of person I want you to believe in. Also, I wouldn’t judge you for that. You know I’m a...well, you know I’m a-”

There was an awkward and bleak beat in time.

“H-huh-homo?” Todd suggested, slightly intending to appear genuine in his words.  
“Yeah,” Neil spoke lightly. “I mean what I say too, Anderson.”

Rather than once again allowing his face to flash into an appearance in which Neil could fully read his emotions, Todd’s eyes wandered off into the distance in the atmosphere. Neil was just being nice. No matter what was happening - those small beats and moments in the universe in which Neil would grab for the nearest hand and grip onto it for some sense of warmth. When Todd would reach his lowest points in those small intervals of depression and Neil seemed like the only viable option in the universe for him to single out and really, truly, speak to. Todd had never genuinely had a form of companionship before, let alone a BEST friend. This was just how people in those proximities would interact with one another. No matter how empty the walls of the Anderson boy’s brain would rapidly begin to feel whenever Neil approached him.

And yet, despite all of his clear subconscious and verbal denial, Todd was speeding out of their dorm at full force and found himself...

Searching for the best damn “romance experts” he seemed to truly know, Knox Overstreet and Charlie Dalton.

━━━

Despite how much the pair waved their middle fingers in the malevolent stare Welton Academy’s rules, Knox and Charlie were deer in the headlights of homophobia. Which is why when they were anywhere else but the cave or each other’s bedrooms, the pair would keep a sort of distance between each other. They would conceal this sort of euphoric feeling, though, which allowed them to virtually seal up the difference. Currently, they were spliced onto seemingly either sides of a small table in their main study room, passing each other these longing and unspoken glances as they swiped through one of Charlie’s new favorite poetry books.

“Knoxious, Nuwanda,” Todd spunkily greeted the duo, causing the two boys to nearly jump out of their respective skins. “G-go-good god, it’s just me! I’m suh-sorry if I interrupted anything, but I r-really need some se-second opinions on some-something personal.”

“No, it’s fine,” Knox insisted, sort of resisting the poisonous daggers that his boyfriend was gradually beginning to bore into his forehead. “Come on now, Todd. We’re always here for advice-”

He cut himself off for a brief pause to clash his teeth together in a gritting manner and state down Charlie, who had been instinctively swiping away some of Knox’s leftover saliva from his salmon-shaded lips.

“Right, babe?” Rather than confronting the matter directly, the Dalton boy’s eyes widened as they flew downwards and he nodded. 

“What seems to be the issue?” Knox sweetly invited the shy, timid boy stood in front of them to ease himself up and begin ranting as he warmly patted on the seat next to his, as though he was opening up an advice roundtable. “Romantic life, socialization, schoolwork, poetry, whaddya need?”  
“Well,” Todd allowed himself a clear path for his words as he settled into that seat next to Knox’s. “Do y-you guys know thuh-that song by Buddy Holly? ‘Everyday’?”

Wordlessly, Knox and Charlie turned towards each other and exchanged momentary glances, silently acknowledging each other’s expressions.

“We’re actually more of Chuck Berry guys ourselves,” Charlie said. “But continue.”

“Neil and I were in our dorm, and h-he was juh-just doing some Cuh-Chemistry work, sort of sil-silently comprehending it. Then, that goddamn song came on. It’s s-so romantic and shuh-shit. Like, ques-questioning if you and your luh-lover will be in love forever.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Charlie muttered, his gaze yanking itself away from Knox and towards his friend. “You and Neil AREN’T dating already?” 

Before Todd could begin to muster up a response, Knox was doing the duty of it for him.

“Babe,” his voice was lathered one this sort of fake sense of sincerity - it was sarcasm. “Don’t be a fucking idiot.” 

Amidst the push and pull between the couple, Todd stifled an uproarious laugh and instead released a snicker. 

“Don’t worry, it’s fuh-fine,” the Anderson teenager kindly muttered in response. “He tuh-told me he was gay tonight anyway.”

Rather than interrupting the sensitive boy for possibly the fifth time in those past handful of minutes, Knox and Charlie exchanged “he didn’t know??” looks amongst themselves.

“Then he asked me i-if I was wruh-writing about a g-girl. So I defaulted to duh-d-defensive mode. He s-said I could con-c-confide in him whenever it was nuh-needed, so I got caught up in his st-stupid chocolate brown eyes and ran.”

“Suhhhhm-ones lovesick!” Knox cheered in his peak possible singsong voice, causing him to now be on the receiving end of Charlie’s exasperated stare.

“Ignore my boyfriend,” Charlie mumbled in an annoyed tone. “I think what’s happening with you is that a song has set off some hidden feelings in you.”  
“C-ca-can a song just...do that?” Todd said, his eyebrows pulled together into a straight line of confusion.

“I’d say so!” Knox insisted, an irresistibly enthusiastic simper growing across his lower face. He was being genuine, and no matter how naive he could become, Charlie found himself enjoying his cheerfulness.

Todd inhaled a large gust of air, making no attempts to draw his vision away from the floor.

“Well, wh-what if I l-like girls?” 

“Hmm,” Knox started to egg him on. “Name one girl you like. And I KNOW you’ve met or seen some of them before. You can’t pull that whole...trick on me where you say you just haven’t met the right girl yet! Believe me - my dad tried, and failed.”

“Rita Hayworth.” Todd simply stated.  
“Nice try,” Charlie spoke through a sigh. “Neil already looks like a male version of her. We’re onto ya, Todd. We promise we won’t judge, just like Neil said of himself.”  
“Th-thuh-thing is, he’s just so-”

As if fate had smacked him over the head, Todd whipped his head around to find the owner of a series of footsteps he had slightly detected a few seconds before.

“Hey, Anderson,” Neil’s tone was impossibly charming as his signature boyish grin crept over the bottom half of his face. “Can we talk...alone?”

The first thing Todd’s vision flickered towards was his left hand. In his grip were a hastily-slapped together bouquet of lustrous, golden-showered sunflowers, which he HAD to have known were Todd’s favorite. The lump in the back of the Anderson boy’s throat seemed to dissolve itself as he stared into those irresistible chocolate brown eyes. 

“Cuh-corner of the room,” Todd barely managed the words out as a splash of rosy shading fell across his perfectly-defined cheekbones.  
As the pair of boys shifted across the room, Neil instinctively slipped his Buddy Holly record to Knox and Charlie, making a seamless gesture for the two to conjure up a romantic moment.

“Todd,” Neil spoke to him in a low voice once they reached the spot. “I feel like I scared you and it pains me more than you would think.”

His words were almost unfortunately humorous.

“Your stupid vinyl,” Todd commented as the music began playing, his words almost backhanded. “Come what may...”

Rapidly, Neil picked up in his words.

“Do you ever long for true love from me?”

“All those singers are too accurate,” Todd spoke through a small chuckle. “Damn your perfect eyes, too.”

“Well, if we’re going on the topic of appearance,” Neil said. “Then I hate your stupid smile, and the way your lips twitch when you start to lie, and how your nose crinkles up like a piece of throwaway aluminum foil when you REALLY think about something. But most importantly, I hate your dumb poetry. How it matches every sense of romance so perfectly and the descriptions pick up on everything around you.”

There was a beat between the duo before Todd did exactly what Neil observed that he would - allow his nose to crumble itself up so perfectly into a vividly zig-zag type pattern when his thoughts pushed him further and further towards a revelation.

“Hey, Neil,” Todd quietly piped up to him. “If we’re on that rol-ruh-rollercoaster Buddy Holly was suh-s-singin’ about, can you just k-kiss me while t-the cuh-cart goes up?”

Without allowing himself a moment of hesitation, Neil replied with a “definitely”.

Slowly leaning towards him as he felt his eyes instinctively shut, Todd’s lips were met by an even warmer and more welcoming pair, allowing him a subconscious route towards his newest sense of euphoria that he found at this stuffy all-male boarding school. Their mouths pressed into one set of joyful sensations, as though they had been awaiting their meeting all their lives.

“Okay, as much as Knox and I LOVE this,” Charlie eased his way back into their interaction. “There IS a nice little closet behind you that Knox and I will often use for this type of occasion. So do Pitts and Meeks. Practically ALL the gays do.”

By the end of Charlie’s sentence, there was a small wage of laughter across the room as Todd and Neil strode to said closet with ease. However, what they did not hear was the scuffling between the aforementioned Pitts and Meeks. So, the very moment that Neil placed his hand on the knob, the pair spilled out and onto the ground. At first, before anyone could utter a word, Todd let out the loudest cackle anyone had ever heard from the quiet boy. So, in true fashion, Neil soon followed suit until the entire room was covered in laughter.

“Thank god for Buddy Holly,” Todd sweetly whispered in Neil’s ear, sending a wonderful sense of sugary warmth skyrocketing through the Perry boy’s body.   
“Thank god for my BOYFRIEND’s stupidly amazing critical thinking skills.”

Todd stifled a gasp at Neil’s true-to-character prompt and straightforward words, but rather than finding his way to speak again, he leaned forward.

“Can I?” Barely allowing him another second to say a word, the two boys were mashing their lips against each other’s, passing a perfectly-weathered sweetness around. In that moment, a rock song never sounded more beautiful to Todd, whose inherent timidness had instantly erased itself in the face of his roommate.


End file.
